"Heston Blumenthal has always been a history nut. So when he came across an exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum that was to display, among 400 other artefacts from Pompeii, the carbonised food that was on the table when the volcano erupted, where you and I would see burnt crumbs, he saw the potential for an entire gastronomic feast." #LastSupperinPompeii
《中英對照讀新聞》Paris takes the cake for priciest club sandwich 巴黎拿下最貴總匯三明治榜首
Paris, the City of Lights, is also the city with the most expensive club sandwich in the world, according to a global survey released Wednesday by an online travel service.
「光之城」巴黎也是世界上總匯三明治最昂貴的城市，根據線上旅遊服務公司週三公布的全球調查。
Hotels.com said it price-checked club sandwiches at more than 750 hotels in 26 cities in Asia, Europe, North America and South America to help travelers size up the affordability of different national capitals.
Hotels.com表示，該公司調查亞洲、歐洲、北美、南美26個城市超過750家旅館的總匯三明治價格，協助旅遊者評估不同國家首都的可負擔性。
The result? Paris topped the list with an average price of $33.10 for the iconic chicken, bacon, egg, lettuce and mayonnaise sandwich that’s a fixture on virtually every hotel restaurant and room-service menu.
結果呢？巴黎（的總匯三明治）以平均33.1美元的價格位居榜首。這種以雞肉、培根、蛋、萵苣與美乃滋製成的經典三明治，幾乎是每家旅館餐廳與客房服務菜單的固定菜色。
Geneva placed second at $32.56, followed by Oslo at $30.50. New Delhi was cheapest at $9.57. "Paris may well be the gastronomic capital of the world, but travelers may be better off sticking to a croque-monsieur," Hotels.com spokeswoman Alison Couper said in a statement.（AFP）
日內瓦以32.56美元排名第二，再來是奧斯陸的30.5美元，新德里最便宜，只要9.57美元。Hotels.com發言人庫博在聲明中說：「巴黎是全球美食之都可能毋庸置疑，但旅遊者選擇法式乳酪三明治對荷包可能比較好。」（法新社）
新聞辭典
take the cake：片語，榜首，可恥至極，也作：take the biscuit。例句：And you say she’s opening your letters now? Oh, that really takes the biscuit!（你說她現在會拆你的信？哦！那真是可恥至極。）
take the cake
Be the most outstanding in some respect, either the best or the worst. For example, That advertising slogan really took the cake, or What a mess they made of the concert--that takes the cake! This expression alludes to a contest called a cakewalk, in which a cake is the prize. Its figurative use, for something either excellent or outrageously bad, dates from the 1880s.
definition of cakewalk. n. 1. Something easily accomplished: Winning the race was acakewalk for her. See Synonyms at breeze1. 2. A public entertainment of the 1800s among African...
Take the guilt off the gingerbread : Phrases
Meaning:
To show something up as worth far less than first thought.
Example:
Origin:
Gingerbread is a cake mixed with treacle and flavoured with ginger. It was coated with a golden leaf and, as such, was often sold at country fairs up to the middle of the 19th century. I guess that sometimes the cake was less than perfect; when the gilt was removed, all was revealed.
Take the gilt off the gingerbread
Meaning
Remove an item's most attractive qualities.
Origin
This phrase has nothing to do with being guilty of anything of course - 'take the guilt off the gingerbread' is just a misspelling. The word is 'gilt', which refers to a thin layer of gold. Gingerbread is a form of cake and, although the association of the two words seems a little odd, gingerbread cakes were in fact gilded for festivals and other special events in the Middle Ages.
The word gingerbread has been recorded in English since the 13th century; it was originally a form of simple cake flavoured with treacle and, not surprisingly, ginger. It was, and is, frequently made as a form of biscuit, by rolling out the dough and cutting it into shapes - men, animals, letters of the alphabet etc.
Gold can be hammered to a minute thickness to form gold leaf. This can be 'gilded' to many different surfaces, including cake, and is harmless when eaten in small quantities - hence its use as a culinary decoration.
The expression 'taking the gilt off the gingerbread' isn't found in print until the 19th century, but the practise of gilding gingerbread cakes was probably in place well before that, as 'gingerbread' has been used as an adjective meaning 'showy and insubstantial' since the 17th century. Gingerbread without its casing of gold leaf was a rather humble offering - often little more than flavoured stale bread, and not likely to attract a reputation for showiness. Using present-day parlance, ungilded gingerbread was more minging than blinging. An early reference to that disparaging usage of gingerbread is found in The History of the tryall of Cheualry, 1605:
Anticke! thou lyest, and thou wert a Knight of ginger-bread: I am no Anticke.
The first evidence that I can find in print of 'take the gilt off the gingerbread' is from The New Zealand newspaperThe Lyttleton Times, February 1854:
To borrow a homely expression, it was determined in taking the gilt off the gingerbread.
The 'homely expression' reference indicates that the phrase was already known, in the Antipodes at least, by 1854.
Sadly, gingerbread men (now often politically corrected to 'people') have had the gilt taken off them and are now usually clad with icing sugar.
See also:
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